Damon Dash has been ordered to pay $805,000 to the director and producers of a movie he filed an ownership claim for.
According to TMZ, a jury sided with the director Josh Webber and Muddy Water Pictures, who created the feature film “Dear Frank” — starring Brian White, Claudia Jordan, Nick Turturro, Lil Durk, and Columbus Short.
The lawsuit claiming copyright infringement and defamation was filed by Webber and Muddy Water Pictures in 2019, naming Dash as a defendant. According to the claim, Dame Dash, in his social media posts, had claimed to be partially responsible for the film Dear Frank.
Dame was originally set to direct the movie in 2016, but he was fired by Webber in 2018 for reportedly being high on the set. The director further alleged that Dash continued to pretend as if he was the director and even sent promotional material for a film called The List, which was the original title of Dear Frank, to companies like BET purporting to be working on the film.
The Roc-A-Fella co-founder even posted on Instagram that he owned the film and disparaged Webber as a “culture vulture.”
“I was going to deal with this later but I guess I’ll have to deal with it now…this is the movie the list #thelist that I directed and produced about a year ago… @muddfilms is pretending he owns this film and @joshawebber (pure culture vulture) is pretending he directed this movie,” Dash wrote.
The dispute arose over the part that Dash had been involved in even though the movie hadn’t been completed until after Dash was fired.
Dame Dash, on the other hand, had responded to the claim by saying that the movie was at his Sherman Oaks property and his house and used his equipment. He added that the footage for the movie was stolen by Webber to continue the film without him.
It appears that the jury did not believe Dash’s version of things and sided with the plaintiffs. However, they did not award the $7 million Webber, and Muddy Waters wanted for damages but instead decided on $805,000 to be paid over to the plaintiffs,
The latest L by Dash comes as he’s being sued by Roc-A-Fella’s Jay-Z over allegations that he sought to auction the rights of “Reasonable Doubt” as an NFT without the knowledge of Roc-A-Fella and Jay-Z. The label has, however, shot back that Dash does not own any rights to the project.
